Crise cardiaque

For those of you who speak French, fear not, I haven't had a heart attack! I think the term 'cardiac crisis' is such a nicer expression than a phrase that implies your own heart has turned on you (although I suppose in a sense it has if you've just had a heart attack)!

No major crisis last night, just the kind of results from a cardiac drift test which I'd have expected after so much missed training.

For my drift test I do a mile and a half warm up to get up to pace, and then run continuous 1.5 mile laps of my local streets, recording my average heart rate and lap times for each lap. The beauty of these sessions is that they can be done as a standard marathon pace steady training run, so can be done regularly without impacting your training. In fact they are good training sessions in their own right.

As expected, I have lost some fitness during my lay off, but the results weren't too bad. My pace has dropped a little for a given heart rate, and I was getting cardiac drift, but I felt strong and could have done more. Once again, the time it took me to do the 10 miles, including a gentle warm up and cool down, was the same as my 10-mile PB - an indication of how much I've improved in the last 18 months since I last raced that distance.

1.5-mile continuous laps. 1 mile warm up/cool down not included

Lap	Lap time	Mins/mile	bpm
1	12:36	8:23	141
2	12:36	8:24	142
3	12:39	8:26	143
4	12:35	8:23	145
5	12:35	8:23	145

For comparison, here's the results from 8 weeks ago:

1.5-mile continuous laps. 1 mile warm up/cool down not included

Lap	Lap time	Mins/mile	bpm
1	12:23	8:15	138
2	12:19	8:12	141
3	12:18	8:12	142
4	12:20	8:13	141
5	12:15	8:10	141

In order to hit my marathon target of 3:45, I reckon I have to set off at 8:15/mile. Although last night's times were down on this, it was a bit breezy for the first half of the lap, and once out of the wind I was able to run faster than 8:15/mile at a lower heart rate than the windy bit. This is always the problem trying to make comparisons between these tests - the conditions have to be consistent.

At least my heart rate, despite the drift, was exactly what I started last year's London Marathon at - last night in red, marathon in blue:


3:45 is going to be tough, but it's looking achievable. I'll re-do the test next week, and hopefully see an improvement as my recovery continues.